Client Privilege

by William G. Tapply

  “Not about that.”

  “Oh,” he said. “You’re still on that other thing. Nothing changed while I was gone, huh?”

  “Yes, that other thing. It doesn’t go away. Some things have changed.”

  “So tell me.”

  “I want you to buy me dinner tonight.”

  “Brady, for crissake, I can’t just—”

  “Listen,” I said. “This is my call this time. I’m not going to let you put me off. We’ve got to talk.”

  I heard him sigh. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess we’ve got to get it over with. Clear the air.”

  “Right. Clear the air.”

  “You know your job, Brady.”

  “I’m your lawyer. I know that.”

  “Okay. Look. I need a couple hours. Suppose you meet me around seven.”

  “Fine. Where?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you come by the courthouse. Meet me down in the lobby. We’ll figure out where to go.”

  “You’re not planning to stiff me, Pops?”

  He laughed. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you’re paying.”

  I parked in the municipal garage around the corner from the courthouse. I locked up and walked over. The lobby was deserted except for the policeman who watched me go through the metal detector. My car keys set the thing off, so I had to go back, empty my pockets, and do it again. The cop seemed bored by the whole process. I guess I didn’t look suspicious. I found that a little disappointing. I retrieved my keys, change, and Zippo, and found an uncomfortable wooden bench from which I could watch the bank of elevators.

  After fifteen minutes I wanted a cigarette. The cop, for lack of anything better to do, was leaning against the wall watching me from under the pulled-down beak of his cap. NO SMOKING signs were everywhere. I stifled the urge.

  At seven-twenty the elevator dinged softly and the door slid open. Pops stepped out and looked around. He spotted me and raised his hand. I stood up. He came over and we shook hands. “You want fancy or simple?” he said.

  “Fancy.”

  He grinned. “That’s what I figured. I made reservations. Got your car with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. You can drive.”

  He said good night to the cop and we went outside. It was cold, and we both turned up the collars of our topcoats. Pops wore no hat. His magnificent shock of silver hair glistened in the streetlights.

  We strolled over to the parking garage without talking. I didn’t want to confront him until we were seated across from each other. I wanted to be able to study his face.

  The garage was an empty concrete cavern, dimly lit. Our footsteps echoed as we walked up the ramp to the second level, where I had left my car. Odd shadows angled from the great pillars that supported the structure. The floor was damp. Here and there melting snow dripped from the ceiling.

  We found my car. Pops waited by the passenger door while I went around to the driver’s side. I fumbled for my keys. Then something made me hesitate. It was a soft click, and what occurred next happened in a split second, but in my brain it took a long time.

  There was that click, a recognized sound. The unlatching of a car door, my brain decided. Not the way a person would normally get out of a car. This sound was cautious and careful. Muffled. Secretive. This was a sound that did not want to be heard.

  Someone had been sitting in a car, I figured. We had seen no one drive in, nor had we noticed anyone walk in ahead of us. So whoever was opening his car door had been sitting there, waiting.

  Waiting for what?

  For us, said my brain. For me or Pops. Or both of us.

  But why?

  I heard the scrape of a foot on the concrete floor.

  “Pops!” I yelled. “Watch it!”

  I dropped to my knees beside my car.

  The sudden explosion of the gunshot crashed and reverberated through the garage. Then immediately there were two more. I heard the ping and whine of ricocheting slugs. Then came the rapidly diminishing sound of running feet. I jumped up to try to see. But I saw nothing.

  Then I was aware of a dark and awful silence in that dank empty concrete building.

  “Pops,” I called softly. “Hey. You okay?”

  There was a frightening moment when I heard nothing except the distant murmur of traffic from outside the garage. Then I heard Pops mutter, “Oh, shit.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I ripped the knee on my goddam pants. I whacked my elbow. Otherwise, yeah, I’m okay.”

  I went around to his side of my car. Pops was standing up brushing off his pants. I touched his shoulder. “You sure you’re okay?”

  He hunched his shoulders into his topcoat. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’m better than your car.”

  He pointed to a groove on the door panel beside him where one of the bullets had creased it.

  “Close,” I said.

  “Too damn close. Let’s get the hell out of here. I could use a drink.”

  I went around and got in and reached over to unlock his door. He slid in beside me. “In a minute this is going to hit me,” he said. “Somebody tried to kill me. Some son of a bitch tried to shoot me, for crissake.”

  “Who’d want to kill you?”

  He tried to grin. It looked sickly. “I suppose,” he said slowly, “it could be lots of people. Guys get sent up, they like to blame somebody. A judge is as good as anybody.” He shrugged. “They sit around in Walpole for five or six years, dreaming of how they’re gonna get their revenge. It keeps them going. It’s their dream. Their anger and hatred fuels it. It could be lots of people.” He shivered. “It’s hitting me,” he said. “Whew!”

  I lit a cigarette. “I’m having an insight,” I said.

  He nodded. “Something to do with how precious life is. And how transitory. Right?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “You didn’t kill Wayne Churchill after all, did you?”

  “Me?” He laughed quickly. “Hell, no. You got it mixed up. Somebody just tried to kill me. I didn’t kill anybody.” He turned on the seat to look at me. “Is that what you’ve been thinking? You thought I killed that Churchill?”

  “Yeah, actually. That’s what I’ve been thinking, Pops.”

  He shook his head slowly, smiling.

  “And you didn’t beat up Karen Lavoie either, then, did you?”

  “Karen?” He frowned at me.

  “Somebody did,” I said. “I figure the same guy wanted to kill you, too.”

  “Why?” he said softly. “I don’t get it.”

  “Me neither,” I said. “But you’re going to tell me all about Karen Lavoie, including all the stuff you left out the first time, and then maybe between us we’ll figure it out.”

  He stared at me for a minute, then nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll tell you all about it. But let’s get a drink first, okay?”

  “Hell, no,” I said. “The first thing we do is call the cops. There’s a crazy person running around out there trying to shoot people.”

  He put his hand on my arm. “No,” he said softly.

  “No?”

  “No cops.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  “Think about it, Brady.”

  “You’re worried about the publicity. Your appointment and all.”

  He sighed. “Damn right I am. And me being here with you, and your being a suspect in the Churchill thing. If the papers ever latched onto this story…”

  “No harm, no foul, huh?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What about my car?”

  “Hell, I’ll pay for the repair, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

  “It’s ruined, Pops.”

  He laughed. “You want me to buy you a new one?”

  “I accept.”

  I started up the car, paid the parking fee, and pulled out of the garage.

  “Where to?” I said to Pops.

  “Locke-Ober’s. I made a reservation. You
said you wanted fancy. And gimme one of those things, will you?”

  “What?”

  “A cigarette.”

  “You don’t smoke,” I said.

  “I once did,” he said, as I handed him my pack of Winstons. “In Nam I smoked. Two packs of Camels a day. I loved to smoke. I figured I was going to die anyway, it would be really dumb to deprive myself of something that might be bad for my health.”

  He used the cigarette lighter on the dashboard, dragged, and exhaled with a great sigh of satisfaction. “I quit when I got on the plane that flew me out. Literally. I had a cigarette going when I walked up the ramp. Flicked it away as I stepped in. It was the last time I smoked. Before now. I still dream about cigarettes sometimes. I guess there’s something about being reminded of one’s mortality. I swear, if one of those slugs had hit me just now, my dying thought would’ve been regret that I had quit smoking only to have an assassin kill me.”

  I headed across the river in the thin traffic. Pops really did seem shaken by the experience. He almost had me convinced that he hadn’t murdered Wayne Churchill or beaten up Karen Lavoie.

  I turned my poor battered little car over to the attendant outside Locke-Ober’s, and we walked up the little alley to the restaurant.

  The maître d’ greeted Pops effusively, calling him “Your Honor.” When Pops introduced me to him, he bowed and murmured, “A pleasure, sir,” with the faint hint of an eastern Mediterranean accent. Charming as hell.

  Our table was waiting upstairs. One waiter left menus and a wine list, a second poured water into the crystal on the table, a third took our drink orders, and a fourth left a basket of steaming breads and rolls for us. In a moment, the third returned with our drinks—Jack Daniel’s on the rocks for me, Dewar’s and soda for Pops.

  I lit a cigarette and held the pack to him. He shook his head. “One was great. If I have another I won’t like myself.”

  “You are a paragon of self-control, Pops.”

  “Yes,” he said, nodding and smiling. “Self-control is one of my main virtues. Want to know about the others?”

  “I want to know about Karen Lavoie,” I said.

  He nodded. “Right. I know. I should’ve told you before.”

  “Of course you should. Why didn’t you?”

  He shrugged. “Embarrassment, I guess. Plus the fact that it was all so long ago and so irrelevant that I never thought anything would come of it. Even when I got that little note in the mail, and that phone call. It’s not like I actually did anything so terribly wrong, Brady. Certainly nothing that would disqualify me from a federal seat. But, yeah, I guess that was it. Embarrassment. Plus, well, maybe I didn’t completely trust you.”

  “Are you serious?”

  He tilted up his glass and looked at me over the rim. “It wasn’t really you I didn’t trust. Hell, you’re about the most discreet man I know,” he said slowly. “Still, things have ways of slipping out. Maybe you’d inadvertently say something to Julie, or leave something in writing for the wrong eyes, or if there were police—”

  “Julie’s at least as discreet as me,” I said. I leaned over the table toward Pops. “I suppose it doesn’t matter why you didn’t tell me before. But now I’ve got to know.”

  “Maybe I will have another cigarette. Just one more.”

  I slid the pack across the table to him and then passed him my Zippo. He lit up and looked at me through the smoke. “It was a long time ago,” he said. “I’d been a Middlesex County assistant D.A. at East Cambridge for a couple years. The D.A. liked me. I was older than most of the other A.D.A.s, and he gave me good cases. I got into homicides very quickly. High visibility stuff. The papers liked me, too. Lots of convictions. I was a Vietnam vet, Yale Law School, turned down all the big Wall Street firms to prosecute bad guys in Beantown for about the same money a junior high school math teacher makes. I was good copy. The governor had already promised me a District Court seat, first one that came open. I wanted it bad.”

  He stared at me for a moment. “I remember all that, Pops,” I said. “Don’t forget, I was already your lawyer then. We were law school chums.”

  “Just setting the scene,” he said. “Marilee and I had been married for five years. Phyllis had just been born. I’m trying to be objective here. I was a dashing fellow. I got lots of attention. Invited to lots of social functions. Marilee couldn’t always go with me. There were always ladies eager to be seen with me. But I behaved myself.”

  “A paragon,” I said.

  He shrugged and smiled. “Yeah, well, not exactly. There was this young secretary…”

  “Karen.”

  “Yes. Karen.”

  Our waiter appeared. “Another round of drinks,” said Pops. “We’re not ready to order.” He turned to me and paused until the waiter moved away. “Karen,” he said. “She was attractive. Very young, very naive. A pretty girl. Oh, she wasn’t spectacular. Not even the prettiest girl to give me the eye, it wasn’t that. But there was a—a vulnerability about her, an innocence, and—hope you don’t consider this boasting, Brady, I’m just trying to reconstruct it for you—she clearly worshiped me. She had these dark, serious eyes. They were always focused on me, it seemed. Somehow, from this girl, it was wonderfully flattering. I couldn’t help being aware of her, the way she watched me.”

  “So you—”

  “So I ignored her. For a very long time. Until one night. I was working late. I often worked late. Not many of the others did. Or if they did, they took it home with them. It was very stressful work. Way too much to handle, really. None of us ever felt fully prepared. But most of the A.D.A.s survived by getting the hell out of the courthouse as soon as they could. They did a lot of drinking after work. They lugged briefcases with them. I never did that. I always made a point to leave my work in the office. I was considered a drudge by my colleagues. They figured I was angling for something more, out to make a name for myself. True, of course. But that’s not why I hung around. I just didn’t want to bring my work home. I felt I owed Marilee and the baby my attention when I was there. Anyway, on this particular night I was at my desk as usual. It was seven-thirty or eight o’clock. I was in my shirt sleeves, my shoes off, my feet up on my desk. I was reading law. Old cases. Looking for precedents. And Karen came in. She had a cup of tea for me. I was beat. I’d had no supper. She put the tea on my desk and sat across from me while I sipped it, just looking at me and smiling. We didn’t say much. After a few minutes she got up from her seat and came around behind me and began to massage my neck and shoulders. I should have told her not to. But it felt good. I was tired and hungry and my back and neck ached. She had strong hands. So I closed my eyes and went with it. She was standing close behind me and I could smell her scent. Musky, it was. Somehow, very sexual. Sometimes I smell that scent even nowadays, and it brings Karen back to me. She worked her hands on my neck and around to my face. She sort of urged my head back against her stomach. I could feel her warmth, the softness of her. It was very intimate. Her fingers worked on my jaw and cheeks and temples and eyes and my scalp and I’ll be damned if I didn’t get aroused.”

  I shook my head slowly. “So you—”

  “So I nothing. After a while she stopped, smiled at me, and left. I’ll bet neither of us said a half-dozen words the whole time. Just ‘Hi’ when she came in and ‘thank you’ when she gave me the tea. ‘Long day,’ and ‘you look tired.’ Stuff like that. Anyhow, I thought about her constantly after that. Made a point to hang around late the next night. Hoping she’d return. But she didn’t. Nor the night after that. But the third night she did. She came into my office, closed the door behind her, locked it, and turned to look at me. She smoothed her skirt on her hips, staring at me, her mouth open a little, licking her lips with her little pink tongue, like it was something she’d seen in a movie, practiced in front of a mirror. Damnedest, sexiest gesture I’ve ever seen. She came over to me, and pushed my chair back from my desk. She stood in front of me, close, so I could smell that scent.
She reached down and undid my necktie, then she began to unbutton my shirt. I wanted to grab her hands, tell her to stop. But I couldn’t make myself. Brady, Jesus, it was like I was bewitched. I swear to God, this girl seemed so shy and innocent and unspoiled, and there she was, kneeling in front of me, undressing me, doing these things to me. I couldn’t resist her.”

  “If you’re asking me to condemn you, Pops, forget it.”

  “I don’t need your condemnation, Brady. I’m perfectly capable of condemning myself. Which I proceeded to do. I avoided her for a week. Started leaving the office at four-thirty or five like everyone else. Figured, okay, I’d bring my work home. But I couldn’t get Karen out of my mind. So—well, you can figure out the rest.”

  I nodded.

  “I gave in to it. It made my work and my family and my impending appointment seem insignificant. I lived for those evenings in my office. We never went anywhere, never did anything except—you know. We never even talked much. I knew very little about her. Just that she lived at home with her parents, I knew that. She had a boyfriend who wanted to marry her. I sensed that she’d had a rigid upbringing. That she was very inhibited. Except with me. She asked nothing of me. Making love, she did it all, really. I rationalized that I’d been seduced, it wasn’t my fault. That whatever happened with Karen didn’t diminish my love for Marilee and the little one. Karen was separate, unconnected to any other part of my life. She didn’t make me a worse prosecutor or husband or father. Nobody was hurt. It was just a nice, sweet thing, with its own separate little niche in my life.” He smiled sourly at me. “The same old story, huh?”

  “It’s kind of a cliché, Pops, yes.”

  “A cliché. Well, yeah, it was. Of course. But it didn’t seem like it at the time. It seemed unique. I felt I was special. Blessed by this marvelous girl. Listen, I was a lucky guy. I survived Nam. Zipped though Yale Law. Married the woman I wanted to marry, had a healthy baby, was taking the career ladder three rungs at a time. I just figured this was part of being a special man. I deserved it, somehow. I was young and strong and invulnerable. Then Karen told me she was pregnant. And that didn’t fit in with any of the rest of it. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Somebody screwed up the fairy tale.”